


Now we can be open for a while

by edourado



Series: Hell's Kitchen Chronicles [11]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Oneshot, Smut, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 00:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13259991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edourado/pseuds/edourado
Summary: Frank has doubts. Karen doesn't.





	Now we can be open for a while

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is about two years old. I posted it to Tumblr and forgot to post it here.  
> I haven't read it again. Hope it's not awful.  
> Much love.

She woke up with the dog licking her fingers.

“Hmm”, she groaned. “Max, no. Go to sleep.”

And then she didn’t feel Frank by her side in the bed. Craning her head, she looked for light, maybe in the bathroom, maybe in the kitchen. It was all dark.

Looking to where he had left his coat the night before, she sighed.

Gone.

She was afraid of that.

Last night, finally, after months of weird meetings where he ended up shooting people, some fights, a second promise that he was dead to her, more shootings, him saving her life three times, her actually saving his once, coffee on badly lit diners, too deep and intimate conversations, some encrypted looks, some not so encrypted, slow, slow, slow flirting, he had kissed her. Sure, he had been yelling at her first, about sticking her neck in dangerous situations, and she was holding her gun and there was an unconscious man lying on the floor between them.

He - the man - would have, probably, raped her. Well, he would have tried. Karen had just taken her gun from her purse, while he forced her to an alley, walking a step behind her, when there was a sick sound and, suddenly, he was out like a light. Frank had beat him on the back of the head with a bat.

Karen had looked at him, and, out of all the questions she could ask while he looked at her like he was about to scold her, she asked why was he walking around with a baseball bat.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked for an answer. Not yelling quite yet, real low and slow, that frown in place.

“What do you mean?”

“What are you  _doing_ , Karen? It’s two in the morning. You sure you should be strolling around the sketchiest streets you could think of?”

“I’m working.”

“Are you insane?”

“Excuse me?”

And then his voice got louder. Soon, he was saying things about ‘dangerous’, ‘criminals’, ‘get yourself killed’ and so on.

Karen waved her hand, still holding her gun, and shrugged.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Frank. This is work, I have to do this.”

He looked at her, breathing in a very irritated way. Then he dropped his bat - it wasn’t his, actually. He just found it lying there - took four steps towards her and over the knocked out man, caught her face and planted his mouth on hers. And then, when she opened her mouth, the shock quickly being replaced with excitement, his tongue was on hers.

“You’re infuriating”, he said, not giving her time to answer, kissing her again.

Soon, they were stumbling into his apartment, he was taking her coat off, lifting her shirt over her head, throwing his own coat on the floor in front of his bed, pushing her until she lied down, her breathing so fast, pulling her skirt down her legs and then pulling her to him by her knees, grunting, and Karen reached for him like a kid for cotton candy.

When she fell asleep, his heavy arm was securing her to the bed.

Now he was gone and she sighed. She knew he was going to do this.

Sitting up, she looked at the window. And then at his coat again. Straining her neck, she could see his shoes.

If he left, he didn’t go far.

Reaching down to pick her shirt from the floor, Karen put it on, and then his jacket (it smelled like him. She probably did, too. The thought made her shiver). Opening the door, she walked to the stairs and climbed until she reached the roof.

Bingo.

There he was. Jeans and shirt, barefoot, sitting on a concrete block, looking at the buildings around him. Of course, holding a plastic cup full of, she was pretty sure, coffee.

“You’re up awful early.”

Turning his head towards her, he did a double look. Looking down her legs, Frank rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, of course walk around the building almost naked. Why not. That’s normal.”

“You’re the only one who likes to creep around at weird hours”, she answered, walking to him, her stomach doing something weird at his sight. She wanted to kiss him again, wanted him to hold her to him, to move and guide and make her lose her mind like he did a few hours before.

“Yeah. I do that.”

Karen walked to him, suddenly nervous. He kept staring at the buildings, the plastic cup on his hands, which he rested on his legs.

What she wanted was to act as sleek and sexy as he made her feel, take the cup from his hands, sit on one of his legs, hold him to her and kiss him. All day long. She wanted to kiss and undress him and let him undress her, she wanted her head to spin again, she wanted to listen to him groaning in her ear, his breath on her skin, his tongue on hers, fingers pressing hard enough to leave bruises.

Instead, she sat by his side, bare leg brushing his jeans slightly.

“You should go home”, he said, matter of factly, as if he was talking about the weather.

Karen looked at him, suddenly scared. The words took a few seconds to come.

“Is that what you want?”

Frank frowned at the buildings, took a small breath in and nodded. Her breath caught on her throat, but she tried to get a grip of herself.

“Shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

She could feel the lump coming up her throat when she noticed he wasn’t looking at her.

“You’re the one who brought me.”

He nodded again, sipping his coffee.

“Hmm. Yeah, well. I’m an asshole, remember?”

Karen looked at the buildings and frowned, too. Maybe if she looked, she could understand what he was trying to do.

“You know I’ll go back and finish that shitbag, right?”

She pressed her lips together, thinking if she should argue or not. She always did and it never worked.

“You know I’ll kill him. And you know he’s not going to be the last one.”

Turning her face, she inspected him.

“Because that’s what I do. This”, he motioned between them. “Is not what I do. I will not be there for you when you wake up, or bring you breakfast in bed, braid your hair or whatever.”

For some reason, that made her want to laugh.

“I… That’s the last thing I expect from you. Can you even do that?”

“No. That’s what I’m saying.”

“I don’t get what you’re saying.”

He sighed.

“I’m always moving. Today I live here. I have no clue about next week.”

This time, she frowned at him instead of the buildings.

“Murdock took you on dates, yeah? That’s not gonna happen with me. You should call him or that creep from your work. The sweaty one.”

“What…Are you talking about Dennis?”

The restaurant critic had asked her out a week back or two.

“Yeah. Maybe the dirtbag can take you to a nice place. He’s boring as hell, might teach you a thing or two about foreign food.”

She tried to contain her smile.

“He’s a dirtbag?”

“Cheated on his wife.”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged.

“Looked him up.”

“Were you… Jealous, or something?”

Finally, he turned his head from the buildings and looked at her.

“I can be. Real possessive.”

Eyes still wide, trying her best not to smile at him, Karen stared, waiting for him to continue on his strange speech.

“I don’t like you running around at night, chasing these lowlives. I want you to stay home, cookin’ or something. I’m always bleeding. Always. And there’s always gonna be other people’s blood on me. Probably yours, sometimes.”

When his eyes reached hers, she could see him looking for more things to say. She let him.

“I bring stray dogs home. You’d hate it.”

Chuckling, she bit her lip.

“Is that what you’re doing? Trying to make me hate you?”

He set his jaw, frowning, like he was thinking hard.

“It’s not working”, she said, raising her hand  to his face. “At all.”

He leaned into her palm, closing his eyes, and, suddenly, he looked like he was struggling.

“I’m not trying very hard. But you should. I’m no good for you, you know that.”

Breathing deep, she got up, acting on that urge to sit on his leg, place her arm around his back and support her hand on his shoulder. Frank’s right hand held her by her waist, the left reaching to pull her legs closer.

“You know I’ve been through shit, right? I’m not a fairy tale princess.”

He breathed in deeply, eyes over to the buildings in front of them again, the glass windows already reflecting the first rays of sun.

“I know what you are, Frank”, she whispered, the hand that rested on his shoulder lifting, fingers running on the skin of his cheek. “I’m not expecting a prince. Just… you.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head, even then hugging her to him and Karen touched her forehead to his temple.

“And this”, she said, placing a hand on top of the one he had on her thigh, pressing a little, moving her mouth to his ear. “You’re good for me like this.”

He was doing it again, groaning against her neck, as if he were a wolf or something.

“Like I knew you were going to be”, she said in his ear, trying to pull him out of this too rational line of thought. “I knew it, Frank. Even when I did try to hate you, I knew it.”

She brought his mouth to hers and pried it open with her teeth and her tongue. 

There he was. Like he said: possessive. Getting up, he towered over her and pushed her body with his towards a door. It was dark, wherever it was they were, now. Dark and silent and not very spacious. Her back hit a wall and he pinned her there, lifting the hem of her shirt  from the top of her thighs, he moved one of his legs between hers, pressing, mouth collecting kisses that were meant for his bedroom downstairs, she thought.

“I told you to stay away from me”, he breathed, that voice of his doing things to her, everywhere.

“I don’t want to”, she said, not pointing out he never allowed her to even try. He was always there. “I want you like this.”

Karen moved her hips against his leg, the rough material of his jeans doing wonders against her.

“Like what?” he asked, moving his hand and  _oh, Lord_. “Like this?”

She hummed, trying to be silent. The sun was up and soon would be his neighbors, whoever they were. Frank readjusted her right leg, placing it more firmly against his hip and she gasped when he moved his hand, intensely, prying, coaxing, yes,  _like this_.

He kissed her again when her hands found the button on his jeans, clumsy, anxious, distracted by the jolts of pleasure shooting inside her. Swallowed her moan, loud, when he sank in, moving slowly, too slow for her. They could do slow later. Now she wanted another sample of that first time, hours ago, when she saw a few stars that didn’t belong to any constellation.

Bringing her arms around his neck, she rotated her hips a few times, moving with him, trying to coax him out of that slow rhythm. When he didn’t but allowed her one sharp thrust, a slight tremor ran through her.

“Not yet, ma’am. Not here.”

Not half an hour later, when he brought her down two flights of stairs, opened the door and guided her to his bed again, Karen was tingling. All worked up, nerve endings on edge, mind fogged and impatient. Max only lifted his head from his own bed, acknowledging their presence and then going right back to sleep.

Frank lied down by her side and maneuvered her to sit on top of him, even then controlling the speed of her movements. Not fast enough for her, still not hard enough.

When he denied her the movement she wanted for the third time in a row, she thought that maybe this was it. Maybe this was the thing that would make her hate him.

She was wrong. 


End file.
